


ringing true

by justjoy



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 14:44:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13366920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy/pseuds/justjoy
Summary: Grace isn't lonely – but she hasn'tnotbeen, either.





	ringing true

**Author's Note:**

> (crossposted from [tumblr](http://presumenothing.tumblr.com/post/169679056425/), come say hi!)

Grace Hendricks came into this world in the late evening of April twelfth, 22 years after David Letterman (if you asked her mother) and 77 years after Henry Darger (if you asked Grace herself).

Grace Ellsworth is a  _Gemini_ , for goodness' sake, and a whole year younger than she should be.

She still has her art, she should be thankful for it and she  _is_ , really, but even that hasn't been left unchanged. Grace relearns her Italian and gets a new agent and paints in the park whenever she can.

But sometimes, she almost manages to forget, lost somewhere in that space between her canvas and the image in her head; sometimes, it feels like she could live here, again, as she hasn't lived anywhere else.

(Sometimes, she misses the light in her old apartment so much that it aches, misses the wide window where she thought she caught a glimpse of Harold every now and then, out the corner of her eye.

Grace Ellsworth never had that to lose. She wonders if she should be thankful for that, too.)

In that sense, then, the sudden move to Italy has been good for that much, at least once she's stopped looking over her shoulder every three steps she takes – it's broken her out of a holding pattern of sorts, one she hadn't even realised that she'd been in.

But Grace doesn't want to forget, either, so she buys ice cream cones in the cold, makes a new tradition out of going to Venice in April, and lets herself think: if only, I wish.

 

* * *

 

And then, one grey afternoon, she looks over her shoulder and feels her breath catch in the shape of  _Harold?_

(Or perhaps she says it aloud, she's not sure and doesn't remember either way, but it hardly matters because he's  _here_  and walking towards her, and Grace finds herself wondering if some of those thoughts hadn't just been wishes after all.)

 

* * *

 

It's almost an entire month later when the call comes.

("You don't have to tell me anything," she had said later, sitting together on the couch of her –  _their_  – apartment, "but whatever it is you had to do... is it over now?"

And Harold had only nodded, slight and stiff, but there'd been enough written on his face that Grace had pulled him close and whispered apologies in his ear anyway, until the last of the daylight faded to dusk.)

The ring echoes oddly in the room that she uses as her studio, and it takes Grace a moment to remember the old-fashioned rotary phone in the hallway.

It's still ringing as she reaches it, the half of her mind not still focused on the composition for this newest illustration now trying to remember if she'd given anyone her landline number of late.

She doesn't think so, but answers the call on the off chance that it's something important. "Pronto, chi parla?"

"Hello," says the caller, "is this Grace speaking?"

The voice isn't immediately familiar, female with a distinctly American accent to her English, but Grace knows when she's not being asked a question. "Who is this?" she repeats, and wishes dearly for her handphone, with the panic button ( _for emergencies,_  Harold had said shortly as he'd installed it with that twist to his mouth that she's learned not to question).

"An old friend of Harold's," comes the answer with a light laugh, as if there's some joke she's not hearing. "Sorry, that sounds  _so_  ominous! I'm one of the good guys, I swear, just – can you pass a message to him?"

Grace almost retorts sharply that she doesn't speak to the dead, to the gravestone over a casket empty save for one battered book; she wouldn't even need to fake her grief for that, real as it still feels in her heart.

But she's also realised full well that someone who knows enough to call this number probably has a good enough guess at the rest, as well, and – she needs to know, if nothing else.

She settles for something in the middle. "Only if you answer my questions first. Two of them."

"Fire away, I'm good at questions." The words are as unhesitating as they are noncommittal, Grace notices.

That's all right. She's come this far, she can work with that.

"If you really are an old friend of his," Grace says, and she probably ought to soften her voice for this but she really, really can't, "then why weren't you there? After – " (and she doesn't mean for her voice to break but it does) " – after the ferry?"

There's a lull in the conversation, the first real one so far, and Grace breathes it in and waits.

"You wouldn't have seen me anyway." The flippant tone from earlier is gone, given way to something sober. "Even if I had been there."

Grace persists. "But were you?"

Then, "I was. Just not like you'd expect," she hears, and she doesn't hear a lie.

Her world reels loose on its axis for a moment.

"And? Two questions, you said." The caller's voice sounds brighter again now – almost familiar, even. "Unless that counted as two?"

Right. Grace brings her mind back to the topic with some effort. "What do I call you?"

"Names are – " there's a huff of what might be amusement " – a  _teensy_  bit complicated right now. Just tell Harry that I'm calling from the subway, okay? And that we're all managing fine, so there's no need to worry his little head on our account."

That's... not the kind of message that she'd been expecting. "And if he wants to contact you?"

"It's the same old number. Don't worry," and there's that same laughter again, just below the surface, "he'll know how to reach me if he needs to!"

Then the line goes dead before Grace can respond, right as she hears Harold's key turn in the front door.

His gaze flits, quick and concerned, between her expression to the receiver in her hand and back. "Did something happen?"

"Someone called," Grace says, because even she isn't exactly sure what just happened, either. "Said she was a friend of yours?"

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> tell me what you think!! this isn't necessarily how i picture things going, of course, but it's an interesting idea to play with nontheless
> 
> (also thank goodness for wiki pages 2k18)


End file.
